Collage: A presentation tool for the K-12 Classroom

1. Collage: A presentation tool for the K-12 Classroom Presented by KanavGoyalAbhinavUppal

2. Introduction • What is K-12 classroom? • “Use of technology in the form of computers and projectors is becoming increasingly common in schools even in the developing regions” • Microsoft PowerPoint is the most commonly adopted method for creating presentations, but how convenient is it for school teachers and how useful is it for K-12 classrooms? • Typically school teachers would not want to alter their pedagogical styles hence technological aids should integrate themselves within classroom pedagogy

3. Related Work • Interactive White BoardExpensive setupNo research on presentation software associated with it • Classroom PresenterDesigned for higher educationPrimary focus on inkingCP works just on PowerPoint slides • Document Camera or visualizerAllows digital projection of paper based contentDoes not support addition of digital multimedia content

4. Presentation tools and Pedagogy • Common Belief : Instructing using PowerPoint increases their engagement levels and increases student productivity • Research shows that difference in learning outcomes is often not significant • Studies have also shown that the learning benefits of presentation software can be greatly improved by enabling post-instructional access to the content of the presentation 

5. Initial Ethnography • 11 schools, 24 teachers, 21 classroom observations • More than 6 computers per school • 6 schools possessed a digital projector and 1 school had one projectors • Teachers had an experience of 2 to 26 years and spoke atleast 5 different languages • 2 of the 21 classroom observations involved the use of Digital technologies

6. Findings • Under-utilization of technology • Reasons • Lack of proficiency of using computers • Not confident technology users • Lack of expertise with typing • Lack of sufficient time to prepare the content beforehand • In an independent survey of 41 school teachers, it was found that on an average the teachers spent 5.5 hours preparing PowerPoint presentations for a 40 minutes lecture • Main usage of the technology was to show pictures and videos

7. Design Principles • Keep it Simple • Minimalize time for preparation • Minimalize typing • Display Images • Easy display of multimedia • Exploit Paper • Help exploit content already present in everyday use

8. The Development Process • Plain Image Viewer kind of interface • Paper integration • Allows teachers to write notes on paper and use in presentation • Interaction with the content • Rectangle selection • Page elements • Zoom facility • Features based on teacher feedback • Page decks, textbox facility, inking

9. The Development Process • Features developed on field • Whiteboard • Page Occlusion • Deleted features • Word selection • Hyper linking • 50 iterations

10. Deployment • Collage was deployed in 3 schools • 2 teachers from one schools and 4 from the other 2 schools • Used in 43 classes (40 hours of classroom usage) • Training required at most 2 man hours per teacher, compared to almost 15 days to learn PowerPoint

11. Demo

12. Evaluation • Qualitative feedback from 6 different users • Flexibility of presentation • Ease of content preparation • Suitability for display of visual materials • Downsides of collage

13. Conclusion • A tool for K-12 classroom presentations • The deployment results suggest distinct advantages over PowerPoint • The findings of the project are at large applicable to those who have a limited computer proficiency and who have greater inclination for using paper based tools